ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS safely inferred from the description quoted above. The date must remain uncertain, and if of the Anglo-Saxon period the fragments were more probably influenced by Roman models, of which several are extant, than by the uniformly punched patterns of the Viking period. Though other family coins have been found on Anglo-Saxon sites, the coins adapted for pendants are generally of the Lower Empire. A silvered base metal coin of Carus found at East or West Walton^ may be compared with small base pieces of Valens and Gratian found at Stow Heath, Suffolk,^ and with another of the Emperor Tacitus (275-6) hung on a ring with two glass beads and found with Prankish remains next a skeleton in a grave outside Cologne.' It is easy to imagine that the busts on the imperial coinage would exercise some sort of fascination on the Teuton whose early attempts at representing the human face were singularly unsuccessful, as witness the incised brooches and embossed bucket-mounts of the period. But gold would fascinate them more, and Norfolk furnishes two remarkable examples of the coins called solidi in the richest of settings. The first is from the north-east coast and the circumstances of the discovery may be given in the words of Mr. Stevenson, who pub- lished it in the Norfolk Archceology * and in the Numismatic Chronicle!^ At the close of the year 1845 a woman was walking along the beach from Bacton to Mundesley, and on approaching the boundaries of the latter parish saw something that glittered lying on the shore near high- water mark. Having taken up and disengaged it from a branch of sea- weed in which it was imbedded she carried it home, not appreciating its worth beyond that of a small roundlet of brass, and of course totally unaware of its claim to peculiar regard. The appearance of the object however, thus accidentally brought to light, led even the simple unskilled finder herself to think that it must be a ' curiosity.' Luckily escaping further injury it passed into the possession of Miss Gurney at North Repps, who generously presented it to the British Museum, where it now figures in a remarkable series of Anglo-Saxon jewellery. The find proved to be a pendant enclosing a gold coin of the Emperor Mauricius. The obverse (fig. 2a) has the imperial head to right, while on the reverse side (fig. 2b) is the usual legend, victoria augustorum, the plural referring to Mauricius (582-602) and Theodosius, who was made a colleague in the empire in 590. A final explanation of the letters CONOB has yet to be found by numismatists,* but the mint-mark ar indicates that Aries in southern France was the place of mintage of the original. Not that this solidus is a forgery in the usual sense of the word, though its appearance is certainly against it. More probably it is a copy made by one of the Merovingian kings who took the coinage of the eastern
- Numismatic Chnnicle, new series, vol. v. Proceedings, p. 9.
- Journal of the British Archieolo^cal Association, vol. v. p. 361.
^ Coloured drawings of the objects are given in Collectanea Antiqua, vol. ii. pi. xxxv.
- Vol. i. p. 194. The jewel is figured at p. 105 of that volume. ^ Vol. ix. p. 131, plate.
- Briefly noticed in Sir H. Ellis's paper on the jewel, Archteologta, vol. xxxii. p. 64.
341
